


The Seraph

by ScripStrel



Series: Michael Mell - Actual Demon [8]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angels, F/M, Fluff, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Love, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 08:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21406942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScripStrel/pseuds/ScripStrel
Summary: "The Angel thinks I've got some kind of soul to keep...Don't know why it should be, but by the Angel, I am blessed."Jeremy is human. He's worse than human, if you ask him.Brooke would say otherwise.
Relationships: Jeremy Heere/Brooke Lohst
Series: Michael Mell - Actual Demon [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1233755
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	The Seraph

His girlfriend was an actual angel. Compared to… well… Basically, everyone Jeremy knew had their moments of being terrible people. Which was fine! It was human nature (or demon nature, or whatever). Jeremy was filled with enough self hatred to recognize he was terrible too. It wasn’t like he was being hypocritical or anything, and Michael was quick to point out that most of Jeremy’s awfulness came with him getting stuck in his head and being a bit of an asshole. He was shit, and it was normal.

Brooke didn’t care, though. She was perfectly okay with Jeremy being terrible. Hell, she agreed to get  _ back  _ together with him even after he was  _ directly _ terrible to  _ her.  _

“It’s called grace, Jerry,” she’d said when he tried to express just how little he deserved her. “The free gift of forgiveness you could never hope to earn.”

She said things like that a lot, and like… out of context, it sounded super harsh. But somehow? It was comforting that she was always so frank about everything. He always knew where she stood and why. Brooke liked him. She liked his floppy mess of hair, the way he opened his eyes too wide when he started rambling, and the little crinkle of his nose when he got flustered. Brooke liked his slightly crooked smile and his fidgeting and his inability to talk coherently eighty-three percent of the time. And he didn’t know how, but when he asked, she just smiled—soft and heavenly—and said she loved how human it all was. 

_ Loved. _

Brooke  _ loved  _ him. He knew it was a normal thing when you were dating, to say it eventually. But. Brooke made him  _ feel  _ loved. And not in the way he’d come to expect. He’d slowly gotten used to having friends. There were people who wanted to have Jeremy around, and it was all still new to him, but it was true. And it was nice. 

Brooke was so much more than nice. 

Sometimes she would look at him, a far-off light in her eyes, and he could swear she was glowing when she told him. 

He was loved. 

That was different. It wasn’t like when Michael said he loved him. Like, “Hey, I can’t imagine life without you,” as great as that was. No. Usually, when Jeremy thought ‘love,’ he thought of squishy happiness and something vaguely pink-tinted. With Brooke? 

With Brooke, love could move mountains. It was golden and rolling and left him feeling more than squishy butterflies. Better than happy. With Brooke, love was fire, power, and peace. 

“I don’t deserve you,” he said to her again one day, sitting at his kitchen table fighting through his pre-calculus homework. 

“You don’t have to.” Brooke’s legs swung from her countertop perch, heels knocking against the cabinets. Her homework was finished and folded up somewhere in her bag. She scrolled idly through her phone, looking up at Jeremy through strands of flaxen hair. 

“I know, just…” He stabbed his pencil at his nonsense numerical scribbles. “Why not?”

She laughed, and in the twilit kitchen, the sound of it glittered like starlight. “That’s not how any of this works, Jer-Bear.”

“I—” Jeremy twirled his pencil. “My whole life, everyone’s been telling me that I have to be  _ good enough.” _

Brooke frowned, locking her phone with a click. “Who’s everyone?”

_ Ha.  _ Who wasn’t? As long as he could remember, he’d always been picked last for every team, always gotten the sad smiles from teachers who said “he’s very bright, he just doesn’t apply himself” and the disappointed glare from his mom when she heard it year after year—His mom, who wasn’t even around anymore. And Jeremy  _ knew _ it wasn’t his fault, but sometimes it was hard to not feel shitty about the fact that she had been so content to leave, as if he wasn’t worth sticking around for. He’d spent all of puberty getting shoved in the hallway and snickered at behind barely-concealed whispers. 

And now his life was finally coming together, but at what cost? Brooke watched from the counter as his entire pathetic existence flashed before his eyes, and then she gave him a knowing look and pointed at her head. 

Because, see, that had been the cost. Things finally started looking up because he’d gone through hell. “The Squip,” Jeremy said. The Squip had made him feel inferior at every turn, somehow more so than literally everything else that ever happened to him.

“It’s wrong, you know,” Brooke said, voice soft. “It always has been.”

Jeremy huffed. “Yeah, well, it’s not like I  _ wanted _ to be degraded and tortured every time I did anything, but it was kinda hard to ignore.” He put down his pencil to rub at his eyes. The homework could wait. “You had one too,” he said. “I mean, not for long, but—” he risked a glance up at Brooke. “You remember it, right?”

The encouraging crease in her brow deepened to something closer to spite. “I didn’t fall for it’s bullshit, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, I mean—”

“I didn’t even know it was _possible,” _she said, leaning back to prop her elbows on granite countertop and glare at the ceiling. “But yeah, I had one.”

This was getting ridiculous. “Why does everyone keep saying they thought it was impossible?” Jeremy asked. “It’s a  _ demon.  _ As far as I can tell, the powerful ones can do whatever they like.” Okay, not  _ everyone _ had expressed indignance at the thought of being possessed. Mainly, it was Christine, whose befuddlement was rooted just as much in the fact that she’d survived the holy Mountain Dew and Michael, who liked to brag that he was too badass and omnipotent for the Squip to even  _ try _ to inhabit, but Jeremy was pretty sure he was bluffing. 

“To humans, they usually can,” Brooke said.

“There you go, then.”

She hesitated, pressing her carefully colored lips together as her eyes flitted around over Jeremy’s shoulder. “Not all of us are human,” she said. 

“I’m sorry?” 

“Well obviously you knew about Michael and—”

“And Christine. Yeah, sure.” He waved her off. “But are you saying  _ you’re  _ a demon? Brooke, no offense, but there’s  _ no way. _ You’re too… too…”

She raised an eyebrow. “Too nice?”

“Yeah!”

Brooke giggled, pouting pink-painted lips at him. “I think Michael and Christine are both pretty nice.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Jeremy said.

Brooke shook her head, sliding off the counter. “I’m not a demon,” she said, “don’t worry.”

“Then—then you have to be human, right?” What else was there? Jeremy had gotten to know a lot more people lately, and he was pretty positive that they all fell pretty squarely into either the Demon or Human category. 

Even if it was more than a little off-putting to learn that Mr. Reyes had been a demon the whole time, too. 

Brooke took the dining chair across from him, staring resolutely at the empty napkin holder and picking at her nails. “A coin has two sides,” she said. 

Jeremy just played with the corner of his paper. Brooke glanced up at him, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

“Do you know where demons come from?” she asked after a moment. 

“Uh…” Jeremy’s fiddling stopped. “Hell?”

The nail polish picking turned into restless tapping, clacking against the table’s worn wooden surface. “I mean how did they get there?”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy admitted. “Michael doesn’t usually like talking about all that stuff. He likes to pretend he’s basically human.” Half the time, Jeremy forgot he wasn’t. 

“Yeah, I can’t blame him,” Brooke said into her hair, scratching her nails against the table. She took a deep breath. 

“Demons are fallen angels,” Brooke said, and the truth hit Jeremy over the head like a bucket of ice water. 

“Holy shit.”

She didn’t look at him, just started playing with her hair, twisting strands of gold between fingers gnarled with restlessness.

“Brooke, you’re not seriously telling me that you’re an  _ angel?  _ Like, feathery wings and a halo and—” Jeremy’s mouth started running without him, his lungs heaving and his hands flapping. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, screaming nonsensical. This— It wasn’t— It couldn’t— 

_ “Do not be afraid,”  _ Brooke said, except it rang like a thousand choruses in a thousand cathedrals. It rattled the glass windows of his soul. Brooke was glowing, looming brilliant. Her hair flamed out from her head, a halo of fire. She was overlaid with afterimages, glaring like a lens flare, except a million times stronger. Some instinct deep in Jeremy’s chest shrunk away from the vision of eyes and wings and  _ multiple heads.  _

Needless to say, he shut up pretty damn fast. 

Brooke slumped in her seat. “I hate doing that.” 

Jeremy blinked sunspots out of his eyes. “You’re—what the fuck?”

She ran a hand through her hair. “I know.”

His tongue was heavy in his mouth. Jeremy swallowed, jaw feeling like it was coming unscrewed. He opened and closed his mouth, chewing out his words. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Well you don’t have to be rude about it.” Brooke glared at him.

“You are a literal  _ angel,  _ Brooke. Why in the ever-loving  _ fuck _ are you dating me?”

She gave him a look like he’d kicked her, all wounded puppy eyes and quivering lips. 

“I love you,” she said, but Jeremy was having none of it.

“I’m  _ such _ a shitty person,” he said. “Like, I’m human  _ garbage. _ Not only are you so much better than me, almost everyone else is too.” It wasn’t self-deprecation, it was just the facts. Nice, normal humans don’t get themselves possessed by manipulative demons bent on world-domination. It takes a special, shitty kind of person to make those sorts of deals with the devil.

Brooke's chair screeched away from the table as she stood and began pacing. “Do you know how lucky you have it?” she asked. Embers of heavenly light danced behind her eyes. “You’re loved more than you could possibly imagine. Humans  _ exist  _ because of love. You survive because of it, and you can be remade by it. You can create and destroy and  _ decide. _ Do you have any idea how jealous I am?”

Jeremy shook his head, nerves standing on end. “I don’t—”

She sat back down with a sigh, hair fluttering in golden sheets against the table top as she bowed her head. “Jeremy, I was made to be a messenger. I’m not special.  _ You?”  _ She looked at him, and his breath caught, inflated by the power in her gaze. “I don’t even know how to say it in words you’d understand, but I promise. Humans can be  _ anything.” _

He swallowed. There was a lump in his throat and a candle in his lungs. Ethereal power—ethereal  _ love— _ swirled like fiery glitter in his ribcage. Jeremy blinked away sudden tears, tearing his gaze away from his girlfriend, who was still shimmering with holy light. It made his eyes sting. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” 

Brooke shrugged, avoiding eye contact. “You said Michael likes to pretend he’s basically human.”

There was a pang behind Jeremy’s sternum. 

“Right, I got it.” He turned back to his homework, stabbing his pencil at it absentmindedly. 

Somewhere in his periphery, Brooke sighed. “Here,” she said, “you can copy my answers.”

Jeremy’s head perked up to see a carefully folded sheet of paper sliding his way. Brooke was smiling at him, just slightly, but it was more than enough. 

He grinned at her. “Brooke, you are an  _ angel.” _

She stuck her tongue out and threatened to take back her generosity, but she was laughing with him.

Brooke’s hair shone with the hint of a halo, and Jeremy figured that if an _actual angel_ could put up with him, then maybe he was alright after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am, trying to write high school juniors realistically and realizing I remember literally nothing from my first period pre-calc class except the horrifyingly realistic dog-faced lady my friend drew one day. 
> 
> Hello! I’m back! I’m not sure if anyone noticed or cared that I’ve been on hiatus, but I know I’ve been feeling writing withdrawals. If anyone’s curious, I moved, and I’ve been super busy figuring out a rhythm to my new schedule. And then Inktober happened and I had auditions for a play, then I did tech for a different play, and I have another audition coming up… Yeah. Writing kinda took a backseat.  
But this fic has been in progress since June, and arguably longer, because “Puppy Love with Brooke as an angel” was the idea that led me to stumble upon the entire “Michael Mell—Actual Demon” concept that started over a year ago. I felt like I had to get it out, even if I'm not as thrilled about it as I'd like to be.  



End file.
